Thai Red Curry Fried Rice by Nana

Today we are excited to have another wonderful recipe from Nana: Thai Red Curry Fried Rice

I love to make fried rice and fried noodle because they are so easy to pack for school and work.

If I were in China my friends would say not to eat too much fried rice, because it’s too much heat. So let me tell you why typical Chinese people drink so much green tea WITH THEIR MEALS. Yes, and it could be almost every meal. In China, we believe food can bring the balance to your body, between heat and cool. So all kinds of food ingredients, vegetable, fruit, herb medicine and even the ways of cooking have been divided into 3 kinds of categories: HEAT food, COOL food, and neither heat nor cool food. For example, watermelon and most vegetable are considered of COOL, rice (neither cool nor heat). Of cause, chili pepper is heat food, but beef and lamb are both considered as HEAT food. That’s why so much Chinese friend meat dishes also have vegetables inside, which aims to get the balance of food. Either deep fried or pan fried with oil have been considered as HEAT, so you can tell that most of fired dishes bring too much heat. Green tea has name for being healthy and also COOL, so drinking tea during or after the meal is the typical Chinese way.

 Let’s come back to the fried rice. I got the Thai red curry paste from Whole Food., You can also use green curry paste or yellow curry paste to replace the red curry here. I made the green curry fried rice before the red curry one. It’s too bland though, so I go with red curry now.

 The ingredients (serves 4): 3 cup of cooked rice, 1 vegetable pepper (I used half red and half yellow in the following picture), 6 white mushrooms, about 8 baby carrots, 10 shrimp1, 2 eggs, beans (as much as you like), 3 tablespoon of coconut milk (optional), 2 tablespoon vegetable oil (use coconut oil if you have it. It is the best for fried rice ;-)) and 1 teaspoon of salt (the curry paste already have salt, so you have to tastes it if it’s salty enough before you add the additional salt)

Step 1. Dice the vegetables you want to add in your fried rice, like following picture.

Step 2. Fry rice with beaten egg. TIPs: I know a lot of people have been told that if you want to fry rice, the rice has to be cooked COLD rice. Actually that is not very true. We usually use cooked cold rice, because it is relatively dry and hard, so it won’t be clumpy when you stair fry with other either vegetable or meat. So that means you can still use WARM cooked rice but it has to be dry. I will show you how to make it.

I added 1-tablespoon vegetable oil, and add rice with over medium heat. I beat two eggs, and pour the egg to the rice, and gently stair, until well mixed (the left picture above). When the cooked egg covers each grain of rice, it will become dry, you could tell when there’s less reflection from the rice when you stair (the right picture above). Put the rice in a big bowl when it cook, and then you can start step 3.

 Step 3. Cook red curry paste with the vegetables. Add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil over medium heat, and then put a whole package of red curry paste. Next add 3 tablespoons of coconut milk, and then quickly add chopped baby carrots and shrimp. Stir for 5 minutes and move to Step 4. 

Step 4. Add the remaining vegetables, and stir fry for another 5 minutes. When I mention stir fry, you can just stir it and leave for 5 minutes ;-). Please taste it before you move to Step 5. You want it a bit more salty than your regular food, because you’re going to add rice later ;-).

Step 5. Add the rice to the cooked red curry and vegetables. Gently stir in rice with it until well mixed.

Step 6. Serve your delicious fried rice.

I know the shrimp with tail does not look appetizing. It’s just that my hubby is a vegetarian and sometimes I sneakily add the whole shrimp so I can easily pick up the whole thing ;-).

 The rice is so delicious, because I cooked it with egg in the beginning (Step 2), which helps it gain all the flavors from red curry and other vegetables. I hope you will like the recipe. If you want to know how to cook the best white rice, please leave the comments to me. I’ve been cooking all different kinds of white rice, on open fire, gas, electronic stove etc., since I was five (not joking ;-P), so I guess I will be able to answer them.